Cropping systems with winter wheat or spring wheat? Root growth, catch crops, nitrogen leaching and baking quality

Summary

In organic farming winter wheat is typically grown after good pre-crops, as it pays well for this in terms of yield and quality. However, winter wheat develops slowly during the autumn, and much nitrate may be lost by leaching before spring. System with catch crops followed by spring wheat, or maybe catch crops intercropped with winter wheat could improve the utilization of the pre-crop effects in wheat cropping. In this experiment we studied wheat and catch crop root growth, crop and soil N dynamics, and effects on yield and baking quality in wheat cropping systems with catch crops. The results showed that the com-bination of catch crops and spring wheat was ideal for resource use, but also that winter wheat had a much deeper root system (c. 2.0 m) than spring wheat (c. 1.0 m), and that the N loss from the winter wheat crops therefore became smaller than expected. Intercropping systems with catch crops and winter wheat showed some promising results, but they are also very difficult to manage.